


the part of me that's you will never die

by superhusbands4ever (Potterwatch97)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, May and Pepper bond over their dead husbands basically, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potterwatch97/pseuds/superhusbands4ever
Summary: “How did you do it?”May startled a bit, not hearing anyone walk into the room behind her, before turning back. Pepper was standing there, still in her black dress, hair and makeup still perfect, but her eyes were rimmed red and watery as she stared off into space over May’s shoulder.“What?” May asks, even though she knows exactly what Pepper is asking.“How did you do it?” Pepper repeats, moving her head to look May in the eye. “After Ben, how did you… how did you learn to….”~May and Pepper have more in common now than they ever did before, but maybe now they can support each other.





	the part of me that's you will never die

**Author's Note:**

> ANYWAY ENDGAME KILLED ME THANKS
> 
> Uhhhh so I thought about this the other day and I haven't been able to forget it since, so I wrote it. That being said, this is probably going to be one of the only canon compliant endgame fics I EVER write because that shit hurted and I'm actually going to start an AU series soon where Tony doesn't die. Yay!
> 
> Title is from Always Remember Us This Way by Lady Gaga from A Star Is Born (I couldn't listen to this song for DAYS after Endgame cuz I cried too much lmao)

May watched Peter, Morgan, and Happy as they say outside together, eating cheeseburgers and listening to Morgan ramble on about something or another. Almost everyone else had gone back to the city or returned to their hotels after the funeral today. Peter, though, had insisted they stay, Morgan asking him to stay and eat cheeseburgers with her that Uncle Happy had gone to get her. No one had the heart to say no to her today (and May didn’t have to heart to say no to Peter either) so she had agreed to stay for dinner.

She was at the kitchen sink, washing dishes and helping Pepper clean up the house since everyone had left. It seemed like the least she could do, after everything the Starks has done for her.

To think she used to hold such a strong disdain for Tony Stark. First when he was a playboy, and then later when he was a reckless superhero. She could never understand why Peter always looked up to him so much, not at first. And the day she had opened her door and saw Tony Stark’s face on the other side was the day she knew her life was going to change forever.

The Stark internship. Finding out Peter is Spider-Man. Calling up Tony Stark and screaming, crying herself hoarse in fear, complete and utter paralyzing terror that Peter would get hurt, that Peter would die, and that Tony would be to blame for encouraging her boy to do it.

 _“If I thought I could stop him, May, I would,” she remembered Tony saying softly. “I tried. But I could take away that suit and it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s not the suit that makes him a hero, May. Peter_ is _Spider-Man. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”_

_“You better protect him, Stark,” she’d said, tears clear in her voice, “you better make sure nothing happens to him or I swear—“_

_“You have my word,” he’d said quietly, “I promise, Mrs. Parker, I will do everything in my power to make sure Peter is safe. I swear on my life.”_

After the snap, when Peter didn’t come home, she knew what to expect. She wasn’t stupid. She’d seen the reports of Tony and Spider-Man following that ship into space. She knew when Thanos came back to Earth without them and killed half of the population, when Pepper called and said Tony never made it back, she knew her boy wasn’t coming home. And when Tony returned a month later with the news that Peter had turned to dust in his arms, that Peter would’ve died whether he stayed on Earth or not because of that purple megalomaniacs randomized killing, she wasn’t surprised. Infuriated, maybe, with Thanos, with the Universe. But even then Tony promised that one day they would figure out a way to bring everyone back. That he’d do whatever it took to bring him back to her, and from the look in his eyes, she believed him.

And he had. He’d done the impossible to bring Peter back to them. He invented time travel to get those stone and restore the universe to what it was. And then he gave his own life to make sure Peter would remain safe, and May knew that she would never be able to thank him enough. That she’d never be able to thank this family enough for everything they’d done, everything they’d sacrificed to keep her baby safe.

She still remembered that one, winter day, four years ago when Morgan was born. She’d gotten to the hospital late in the day, and Pepper was already asleep. She’d walked into the room and found Tony, sitting in a rocking chair with a pink bundle in his arms, tears dripping down his nose as he looked down at her.

 _“I feel like I don’t deserve this,” Tony said, looking up at May with such intensity that May had felt her heart clench. Thrown back to that day, a month after the snap, when he’d shown up in her apartment so_ broken _and so_ defeated _she didn’t even have the energy to be mad that he came back but not Peter. “Why should I get this? Why should I get to be this happy when he…. I feel like I traded one kid for another, May. How is that right?”_

_“Don’t,” May had said forcefully, crouching down to look Tony in the eye. “Don’t do that. You deserve to be happy, Tony. It’s what Peter would want and you know it.”_

_He was quiet for a moment before he looked back down at the baby in his arms, heart melting as she sniffled and tried to burrow further into his chest._

_“I’m going to bring him back,” Tony said quietly to the baby in his arms, “one day, I’m going to figure out how to bring him back, and then you two are going to be inseparable. He’s going to love you_ so much _, and I’ll do anything to protect you both. To keep you both safe.”_

And he’d done that too, she thought, as she watched Peter and Morgan outside. Morgan was sitting next to Peter telling him some story or another, and he was listening so intently you’d think she was telling him the secret to life. This is what Tony had died for. Those two kids out there were his whole universe, and that was the universe he’d died saving. She just wished he could be here to see them together, finally.

“How did you do it?”

May startled a bit, not hearing anyone walk into the room behind her, before turning back. Pepper was standing there, still in her black dress, hair and makeup still perfect, but her eyes were rimmed red and watery as she stared off into space over May’s shoulder.

“What?” May asks, even though she knows exactly what Pepper is asking.

“How did you do it?” Pepper repeats, moving her head to look May in the eye. “After Ben, how did you… how did you learn to….”

May was silent for a moment, thinking about what to say without sounding cynical.

“I won’t lie to you, it wasn’t easy,” she said finally, moving to finish rinsing off the final dish before placing it on the drying rack. “It still isn’t.”

Pepper nodded, glancing down to her feet.

“It never gets easier, really,” May said, turning back and leaning against the counter, “if anything it just gets… more bearable. Most days it doesn’t hurt too bad.”

Pepper nodded again, moving slowly to stand next to May and watch Peter, Happy, and Morgan play through the window.

“Most days you’ll think about him and it—you mid him, but it doesn’t hurt. You’ll think about him and you’ll smile, because you’ll remember all the good times you had with him. You’ll remember him while he was happy, and it’ll make you feel warm, like he’s still with you, in here,” May said, pointing to Pepper’s heart through her chest before taking a deep breath and looking her straight in the eye.

“And then some days… some days it’ll hurt so much it feels like you can’t even breathe,” May whispered, watching the pain in Pepper’s eyes and knowing the same pain she saw was reflected back in her own. “You’ll turn as if to say something to him or a song will come on that reminds you of him and you just… feel pain so unbearable you can’t even find a reason to get out of bed. Can’t even find a reason to keep going on if it means going on without him next to you.”

She watched Pepper’s eyes fill with tears and her face crumble, hand coming up to cover her mouth as she nods again.

“But you have to. You have to keep going, for them,” May whispered, turning to watch Peter pull Morgan into his lap and steal her one of her French fries, making her laugh. “You have to keep going because they need you to. Because she needs you to be strong.”

She turned to look back at Pepper, who was watching her daughter through the window, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“And it’s not fair,” May said, feeling her own eyes get misty and her voice start to shake. She reached out to grab Pepper’s hand and Pepper gripped back tightly.

“It’s not fair that you have to be the strong one. It’s not fair that you got left behind. It’s not fair that you have to try and learn to move on, to live without him when you thought he’d be by your side forever. But you have to. Because she needs you to be strong. Because it’s what Tony would want… for you to be happy and continue living.”

“She looks just like him,” Pepper whispered after a moment of silence, “I can… I can see him in everything she does. Everything she says. And it— it hurts. It hurts so much to look at her and remember that he’s not here. And I feel like an awful mother for feeling like that but at the same time I— I feel like without her I’d go crazy, you know? Having her… it’s like a piece of Tony is still here with me but it _hurts_ , you know?”

“And that’s okay,” May quickly reassured her, “that’s perfectly fine. You’re not an awful mother for feeling that way, Pepper. After Ben… Peter is so much like him. Sometimes Peter will say something and it… it’s like getting struck by lightning, because suddenly all I can see and all I can hear is Ben. But I’m grateful for it. I’m so glad I have Peter because honestly, even if it hurts me sometimes, I know I would never have made it through without him.”

“I’m so afraid she’s going to forget him,” Pepper admitted, turning to look back at May once again, “not just… Tony Stark, because she’s always going to know him. Like the world would ever let her forget Iron Man. But… I’m afraid she’s going to forget Tony. Not the man the world will talk about him as, but— but as the man who would hold her when she was sick or scared. The man who’d sing her Italian lullabies when she had bad dreams. The man who’d braid her hair and and play princess with her and let her paint his nails. I know she’s always going to remember Tony Stark, hero who saved the universe… but I don’t want her to forget her _father_.”

“We won’t let her,” May promised, using the drying towel by the sink to wipe Pepper’s cheeks, “between the two of us, Peter, Happy, Rhodey, and all of the Avengers… we won’t let her forget. We’ll make sure she knows who Tony really was. I promise.”

Pepper nodded again, before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around May in a tight embrace.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “thank you for being here. Just… thank you.”

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

They stayed that way, holding each other and soaking in the comfort before Pepper pulled back and wiped her eyes.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to or anything but,” Pepper, glanced out to where the two kids were playing under Happy’s watchful eye, “do you think you two could stay? Just for the night? I just… I don’t know if I can—“

“Of course,” May said gently, going to back to drying to dishes by the sink, “honestly, I don’t think I could pry Peter away from that little girl if I tried.”

Pepper laughed a little, nodding as she watched the two through the window.

“Tony would talk about him all the time, before,” Pepper said quietly, though fondly, “I’m pretty sure Morgan is truly convinced Peter is her long lost older brother.”

“Of course he is,” May said easily, laughing when Pepper turned to look at her in surprise.

“What? I’m not dumb. Listen, I love Peter so much he may as well be my own son and… well, I know Tony felt the same way. Whether he was ready to admit it or not.”

“True,” Pepper said, amused, “Tony wasn’t always great with emotion back in those days, but it was clear to everyone that he loved Peter.”

They were quiet, after. Drying the dishes and watching the kids play outside. Their laughter could be heard through the windows and Pepper smiled as she watched her kids, finally together after so many years of waiting. She wished Tony could’ve been here to see it. This, those two kids out there, saving them and having them together was the reason he’d risked everything and given his life in the first place. Pepper smiled, sadly.

“Hey,” May said, grabbing Pepper’s hand to get her attention, “everything is going to be okay. You’ll see.”

“Yeah,” Pepper said quietly as she watched Peter lift Morgan above his head, Morgan laughing joyously while Happy yelled at them to be careful, “I know it will.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself cry writing this, fun fact. Like, full on sobs. I had to take breaks lmao


End file.
